Performance of nanofluids on heat transfer in a wavy solar collector

Abstract

The problem of steady, laminar and incompressible natural convection flow in a wavy solar collector is studied. In this investigation, two vertical walls are perfectly insulated. The top cover glass surface is continuously absorbing solar energy. The bottom wavy solid surface is kept at a constant temperature Tc. Numerical analysis is done by this article for the performance of different nanofluids on convective flow and heat transfer phenomena inside a solar collector. The solar collector has the flatplate cover and sinusoidal wavy absorber. Two different nanofluids like water based Ag nanofluid and water based CuO nanofluid are used as the working fluids inside the solar collector. The governing partial differential equations with proper boundary conditions are solved by Finite Element Method using Galerkin’s weighted residual scheme. The behavior of both nanofluids related to performance such as temperature and velocity distributions, radiative and convective heat transfers, mean temperature and velocity of the nanofluid is investigated systematically. This performance includes the solid volume fraction namely φ with respect to water based Ag and water based CuO nanofluids. The results show that the better performance of heat transfer inside the collector is found by using the highest φ of water based Ag nanofluid.

Keywords: Free convection, wavy solar collector, finite element method, water based silver nanofluid and water based copper oxide nanofluid